


If Music Be the Food of Love

by AnnetheCatDetective



Category: An American in Paris - Gershwin/Lucas
Genre: Canon Disabled Character, Communicating Through Music, Extended Metaphors, First Time, M/M, Scars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2020-06-22
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:33:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24821653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnetheCatDetective/pseuds/AnnetheCatDetective
Summary: What, me writing fanfic for another musical while leaving my other projects hanging? It's more likely than you think!Adam really has no idea how Henri keeps seeing so much good in the world, and he definitely has no idea how Henri keeps seeing so much good in him. He might never understand the former... he's beginning to catch a hint about the latter.
Relationships: Henri Baurel/Adam Hochberg
Comments: 8
Kudos: 15





	1. Listen to the Rhythm of My Heartbeat

“We will still take Radio City together, won’t we? Even now that you are the toast of Paris?” Henri asks, and there’s a real trepidation in his voice, one that’s never touched his dreams of Radio City Music Hall before, as he alights on the very edge of the piano bench, and pierces the quiet bubble surrounding Adam.

No one else ever seems to do so with such ease. Not the way Henri does, easy and unbothered by the sulking lows of an artistic temperament. 

Adam scoots down a little to give him space to actually sit. “Together?”

“But of course together. No one else could play your songs for me-- not the same way.”

“Someone else would play ‘em the way you want ‘em.”

“You play them the way I want them.” Henri smiles at him, with a warm, sly mirth. “Eventually. You do want to go home? Someday?”

“Sure. Someday. It’d just be easier… if I was going home a hero, instead of a cripple.”

“You are a hero--”

“I’m a bum who couldn’t even fight most of the war. That’s what I’d be going home as. I’m not ready to be pitied by everyone I knew just yet.”

“No, no.” He protests, and Adam tries to shake him off, but he won’t be shaken. Which is just like Henri, really. It’s easily his worst quality, he’s always trying to argue Adam out of his pessimistic streak. His worst quality… and his best. “I think you are brave, to sacrifice so much. To have known it could easily have been more, and to have chosen to fight anyway, to help strangers on the other side of an ocean. And I think you have seen ugliness but you create beauty. And I think that I-- I have much admiration for you.”

“Doubt I did half as much with the army as you did with the resistance.”

“We fought very different wars.” Henri nods. “But sometimes I think you and I are maybe the same.”

“That’s a laugh. You and me? Mister sunshine and this old gloomy raincloud?”

“Yes. Maybe. At least sometimes I hope that we are, in some little way. Because I do have admiration for you.”

“I admire you.” Adam says, and it’s as much confession as correction. He has to break eye contact, before he can read too much into Henri’s wondering. “I, uh… I don’t know how much we’re alike.”

“We both love music. And to create it in the ways we are able. Perhaps your way is more than mine--”

“No, no, I… I do what I do so you-- You know? We’re two halves of making it happen.”

“When we go to New York, you will have to show me everything.” Henri’s laugh is a brittle question, and for once, Adam can’t tear down his dream even a little.

“Sure. Guess I better. Can’t let you wander around alone, getting yourself into trouble on account of you can’t get the local lingo right.”

“I know it will take work. Maybe a long time. But… I believe in it. I think we work well together.”

“Maybe so. I mean I guess… if we’ve done everything we’ve done and come through all right, anything’s possible.”

“Mm, this too. We both have scars. In that, you and I are the same.”

“I--” Adam falters. He doesn’t know how to say he wouldn’t have guessed, or that Henri shouldn’t have scars, that he should never have been hurt, that all the times he needled him about spending the war in comfort, he never really wanted to imagine anything else for him. He doesn’t know how to ask where they are, if they ever still ache, how he got them and if any of them were close calls. “Yeah. Hell of a thing to have in common.”

“D’accord. But, we have it.”

“We oughta have something nicer. That’s all.” He shrugs. 

“D’accord.” Henri’s fingers glide over the keys, never with enough pressure to make a sound. “You asked me to be brave. And to be honest. You asked me to be as the man I was. But for me, it was not bravery, to fight for my friends and neighbors, and everything and everyone that I loved. It was no choice at all to do it. And certainly I was not honest. I have done what you have asked. I have broken my engagement.”

Adam should say something, anything, to that. He did press him to do it, and what for? He was never in the running, and if he himself is anything approaching brave or honest, that’s never what he wanted from Lise. They shared something beautiful, and it was a kind of love, but not that kind. No, he and Henri share that in common, too. Loving a girl, but not the way a girl necessarily needs to be loved. At least not by the man she marries. 

“You did the right thing.” He says at last, in a voice that doesn’t feel like his own.

“Tell me which you would rather.” Henri hardly sounds himself, either, for whatever that’s worth. He sounds like the version of himself Adam’s only ever seen in front of his parents-- cowed and desperate and lost, worried and waiting for something, clouds rolling by and covering up all that sunshine. “Tell me which Henri you would rather-- the man I was, or the man who is brave and honest.”

“Brave.” Adam whispers. “And honest. That’s who you _are_.”

“You are to me sometimes a distraction.”

There’s a weight behind his words that Adam doesn’t understand, he holds himself like he’s awaiting execution. His chest heaves, his hands tremble. Something has been lost in translation, which Adam hardly dares chase after, even alone in the cafe. 

“What do I distract you from?” He asks anyway, because he could at least take his own advice. He thinks he knows something about the kind of bravery Henri is reaching for. 

“All the world.” Henri laughs sadly, and his hand finally plinks down against the keys. “Did you mean what you once said to me?”

“Which thing?”

“I know you were teasing me also, but did you mean it, that your feelings would not change, if…?” He meets Adam’s eyes again, and he’s never looked so fragile in all the time Adam’s known him. He wants to scoop him back together and fix it.

“I meant it. My feelings about you only seem to change in one direction, in all the time we’ve… in all the time we’ve had this thing.” He gestures to the piano. Plays a lilting little preamble to a song he hasn’t yet written him. “Even if I pretend I can’t stand you some of the time.”

“Oh?”

“Nothing’s ever made me like you less.” He shrugs, pauses to jot down the tune before playing it over again, adding a little more. “And that certainly wouldn’t be the thing to start. I mean… you and me, we’re maybe the same.”

“Adam…” Henri places a hand on his thigh. Too close to the knee to be daring, perhaps, but it still thrills him. “Please-- tell me I am not alone, that the way I feel, you understand.”

“I think I do.” He nods. “Damned if I know what to do about it.”

“ _Embrace me_.” Henri demands, sways towards him, and he hates that he’s an artist before he’s a lover, but he’s never been struck in the face with music like this before.

“Say that again.” He swallows, going back to the keys. Three ascending notes.

“ _Embrace me_.” Henri does.

“Sing it for me.”

“Are you ever going to _do_ it, or am I going to sit here growing colder while you compose a song?”

“A song for _you_ , you ingrate.” Adam kisses him quick, more on the cheek than the lips, though he approaches the corner of his mouth.

“Yes, you can compose songs for me later, though. I have enough of them to last me a little while.”

“No, no, really for you. About you. About…”

“About?” He softens, leans on Adam’s shoulder, as Adam plays through what he’d had of the preamble, as he finishes it this time. Henri gasps softly, straightening, when he does. “Adam, that is… your feelings for me?”

“I guess so.”

“That was very forward, those last measures.”

He laughs, grabbing his pencil to finish jotting down what he has so far. “You think so?”

“Are there lyrics?”

“Not yet, not for that, but they’ll come.”

“I’m afraid they will be very racy, when you get to that part.”

He loves that Henri hears these things in the music. That he can listen to what Adam composes and follow the thread of his feelings, his intent. It’s the purest form of self-expression Adam knows, but not everyone could listen to the music and truly know his heart.

He plays a little more, another rather forward bit that makes Henri blush and glance away, and grin at him in shy expectation as he jots down everything he’s got. It’ll need work, and as lyrics go, all he’s got is ‘embrace me’ and a nebulous idea or two. But the fine tuning can definitely wait…

“Now… you were saying something?” Adam cups Henri’s face, leaning in.

“Are you going to listen to me this time?”

“I always listen to you. Eventually.”

“Embrace me?”

Adam does, gently folding Henri into his arms-- as best as he can while they’re sharing a piano bench. Until they’re cheek to cheek and he can feel Henri’s sigh warm against his ear.

“Henri…” He breathes him in, lavender and spice and skin musk. Floral, but still masculine, and very _French_ , which he figures is appropriate for Henri. He likes it, anyway, he likes it on him.

“Adam…” Henri answers, with the kind of pleading whine no man could be asked to withstand. He pulls back, his arms still wound around Adam’s neck. “Please-- please, I have _longed_ for you. Haven’t you, for me?”

“Not here-- we should… let me finish shutting down, we’ll go up to my place.”

“Eh bien.” He pulls away, straightening himself up a little. “And… bring your music, will you?”

“I thought you _longed_ for me.”

“ _Madly_.” He smiles, and tweaks Adam’s nose. “But you are an artist, _cheri_ , and if you leave it behind, you will decide you must come back for it at the most inconvenient time.”

Okay, so maybe that’s fair. He shuffles his papers together and levers himself up. His knee is stiff and the pain isn’t so bad but it radiates up and down the leg more than he’d like. He can still move his hip all right, and he doesn’t need any help bearing his own weight, but there’s a self-consciousness when he thinks about the question of what exactly Henri wants with him. If he just wants to be kissed a while tonight, and to talk sweet to each other, and to agree to meet another night to take things further, or if there’s more that he _longs_ for, if he means he wants it all to happen tonight. And, if he does, what exactly he wants. Adam’s experience with other men only goes so far, but he knows enough in theory, and he knows that for him, a few things remain out of reach except as theory. He could do enough-- on a good day, he’s confident he’d be able to satisfy whatever desires Henri might have. 

Probably.

It’s just that there are so many _possibilities_ , and he doesn’t know his preferences. And he hasn’t been with anyone since… well, since. He’s never had to undress in front of a partner, with his mess of scars. He’s never actually found where his limits are when it comes to positions and driving the action for somebody else, he just knows he has them now where he didn’t before.

But this is Henri, he reminds himself. Henri knows him better than anyone, Henri’s seen him hit limits before and he’s always so damn _graceful_ about it, about adjusting his speed, about knowing when to offer a hand and when not to, about how to behave as if he doesn’t see Adam’s struggles even as he makes them easier to bear when he can. Henri makes his worst days a little easier to get through, and he never fusses over him on his best ones, which would only set off a bad mood. Just… smiles, when he sees Adam do something he hadn’t been able to the day before. Just makes himself useful in little unobtrusive ways when it’s needed. Just lets Adam grumble when that’s all there is for it. If Adam’s got to take this at his own speed too, Henri won’t ask him for more than he can give-- he’ll meet him halfway on it and they’ll figure it out.

The last time he’d had Henri up to his apartment, Henri had brought up supper, and more wine than two men strictly needed. They’d wound up on the floor together, loose and giggly as they argued over music, and they’d woken up there, too. He’d been stiff as hell and Henri had been apologetic, but Adam hadn’t regretted it…

The upright piano upstairs is an ugly thing-- it had been busted up so bad when Adam had gotten his hands on it that he hadn’t been sure he could save it. It’s suffered a couple peeling coats of paint and it’s missing more of its exterior than he’d call ideal, but thanks to hours of work, it plays. And fixing it had been the first project since his leg that gave him something to do other than drink. 

Henri is fond of it-- Henri calls the piano ‘him’, and talks about him almost like a person, and it’s endearing. There’s an empty vase sitting on top of the piano, that Henri had brought in with flowers, once. For the piano, because of course they were.

“We will have to arrange to bring him to New York.” He says, running his fingers over the keys as Adam sets his new composition in place on the music stand. 

“Will we? I’m not sure it’d be worth the dough it’d cost to move it.”

“We can hardly leave him. You worked so hard.”

“And it’s still an ugly, broken wreck.” Adam snorts.

“But it makes beautiful music.” Henri bites his lip, plinks gently at a couple of keys. 

“I can make beautiful music on a new piano.”

“But this one makes beautiful music because of you. Because you looked at something broken, and understood that he had more to give the world, and so you worked to fix him.”

“If you can call this ‘fixed’.” 

“He has his scars also. But to me, this is not ugly. Not only because the music is beautiful, but… because I come here, and I see him where he belongs, and I get used to seeing him, and I start to think… I like the way he is. I like this place where the paint is thin and you can see he was painted green first. I like that there is no front panel and I can watch the workings of him when he is played. I like that one of his legs is from a table because the first one couldn’t be fixed. I… I like him very much the way that he is.”

_Oh_. Adam shuffles over to wrap his arms around Henri’s waist, lays his head on his shoulder. “You French, so sentimental.”

“You Americans, so-- oh…” He sighs, distracted from his riposte by Adam’s lips finding the skin above his collar. 

“So?”

“ _Wonderful_. Eventually.”

“Eventually.” He chuckles, loosening his grip so that Henri can turn around, so that he can kiss his lips at last and feel the way he _melts_ at it. “Do you really love that piano?”

“I do.”

“Would you really be broken up over going to New York without it?”

“I would.”

“You really wouldn’t rather have a nice-looking, not-busted one?”

“He is not ‘busted’, he is _repaired_ , and I like his looks.”

“Are we--” Adam swallows. “Are we talking about the piano?”

“We are… also talking about the piano.” Henri shrugs, and kisses him softly. “But if you are asking… He is _repaired_ , and I will not go to New York without him, because he is perfect and I love him.”

“He’s yours, then.”

“Are we talking about the piano?”

“We’re also talking about the piano. Finding a way to move it’s your responsibility if you want to keep it. But… you know. He, uh… he wouldn’t make beautiful music if you didn’t need him to, he’d just be, uh, he’d just be junk.”

“I don’t think that is true. But… I like that he plays for me.” Henri runs his fingers through Adam’s hair, smiles at him with so much warmth. “Will you?”

“I’ll play it, if you’ll tell me what you think.” Adam lowers himself carefully onto the stool, and Henri moves to stand behind him, hands gentle on his shoulders. He’s done so before, but there’s a new intimacy to it. His body is closer, warm at his back. He starts at the beginning, feels Henri breathe deep and sink into the music with him.

“It is… almost cheerful, but lonely also, to start. Wistful. And then… I hear where we meet.” He says. “You don’t like to be hunter or prey, instead you… _invite_ me to come closer. And then…”

“And then?”

“We put our arms around each other.” Henri is just slightly breathless, narrating the piece. “You tease me, but you are sweet to me also... You know that I will understand you… I am a little bit dizzy to be so close to you. Maybe you are as well? We are happy. You hold me and we are happy... And-- _oh_ , really, Adam. And you coax me a little more, to be closer to you still. Because you want me…”

“And what do you want?” He leans back. Henri’s hand slides down to cover his heart, and Adam holds it there.

“I want only you. The first time that I heard you play your own music, I wanted only you. But… I did not know yet, how I would love you.”

“I knew.” Adam lifts Henri’s other hand, turns to bring it to his lips. “I knew the day I took your advice and realized you made the music better.”


	2. And You'll Get Just What I Mean

They drift from the piano to the bed together, trading shy and giddy smiles, hand in hand. 

“I don’t know what you were expecting.” Adam sits, reaching for Henri’s other hand. 

“I am not. Only… hoping?” 

“Hoping for…?”

“For you to take me to bed. I am not your first?”

“Well… no, not… I mean, back when I joined the army, I had a guy I’d… We weren’t serious. We did each other favors. I haven’t since then. Why, have you?”

“Like you said, I… had someone, and we… were not serious.” Henri nods, though there’s a certain weight to it that suggests his feelings had once been. “But it has also been a while. So… maybe we will find our footing together?”

“That sounds good to me.” Adam squeezes Henri’s hands before letting go, patting his good leg. “Come down here and kiss me.”

“I won’t be too heavy?”

“Nah.” He shakes his head, and Henri perches there as lightly as he can, his arms going around Adam immediately. “See, you’re just right. Nice and cozy.”

“Mm, cozy.” Henri kisses him, light and gentle. Heaves a deep sigh when Adam’s arms wrap around him, weight shifting carefully as they bring their lips together again… “Oh-- very cozy.”

“Mm-hm, I got ya. C’mere, I think we can get cozier.”

They can. They do. It’s a little like the music-- Adam sets a tempo, Henri suggests a change. Only he’s gentler with this, and Adam’s happier to acquiesce. They each have a say in it, there’s a back and forth to how they work, and it’s… harmonious. Bit by bit they coax each other into something deeper and sweeter, sometimes slow and sometimes fast. Henri is unsurprisingly vocal, even in this, giving full voice to each satisfied sigh, each needy whimper, each _moan_. Adam thinks with a little time and experimentation he could play Henri about as deftly as the piano-- he’d enjoy the sound about as much, if they didn’t have to watch it, if they didn’t have to muffle each other a little. His neighbors aren’t too near and his walls aren’t too thin, for a man in his position-- his recent position-- but they can’t be careless. 

“Je t’aime a la folie.” Henri gasps the words out between kisses, a tempo he’s starting once more to step up. 

“Me, too. Like crazy.” Adam nips at his lower lip. “I’ll give you this, sounds more romantic when you say it.”

“Mais naturallement.”

“Language of love, right? Tell me something pretty.” He slides a hand up under the back of Henri’s jacket. “Seduce me.”

“Seduce you?”

“You’ve never seduced an American boy before? I can promise we’re easy.”

“I have never been… ah, I have never _seduced_ , exactly. Only been in an… agreeable arrangement.”

“You sounded pretty confident a second ago.” Adam nuzzles at his jaw. “Look, the answer’s yes, I just like hearing you, that’s all.”

“The answer is yes? Even if I am not… I can only say what I feel.”

“Good. I wanna hear it.”

“D’accord. Je t’aime bien. Sans toi, je ne suis rien. Et… et je t’ai dans le peau.”

“I got some of that.” Adam nods. “Not the part that got you blushing.”

“Ah, in English… a little bit like… euh… Cole Porter? I’ve got you under my skin.”

“I bring you to bed and you bring up Cole Porter!” He teases. “I may not write better than Cole Porter, but I bet I kiss better.”

“Cole Porter has never kissed me.” Henri shrugs. “I cannot say.”

“His loss.” Adam twists around so that he can push Henri back onto the bed, startling a laugh out of him and getting him to cling on a little, chest heaving. It’s worth the slight spike in pain that flares up towards his hip, and the second spike as he gets them properly arranged where they won’t slide right off the bed. “My turn to seduce you.”

“I am seduced.” He laughs again, and leans up to kiss Adam, quick and sweet, one hand gentle at his cheek. 

“I’ll get the light, then.”

“No, no, we’re already in bed.” Henri goes all octopus on him, clingier than he was a moment ago, arms winding around him in new and very pleasant ways, their bodies pressed close. “Don’t go. I’ll miss you.”

“It’s two steps.” Adam chuckles, and lets Henri spread around a few more desperate presses of lips to skin, his cheek, his jaw, his neck… He likes the way Henri is passionate, the gentleness and the fervency and the way he leaves room for Adam to take as much of the lead, the way he’d let him take more of it if he wanted, probably. 

“ _Tellement_.” He insists. “Don’t you want to see me? I am perhaps not thrilling, but… I think I am mostly all right to look at.”

Adam blinks down at him a moment and tries to fit the question into his head. 

“Of course I do.” He says at last.

“If you prefer the dark, of course, I--”

“No, I-- I want to see you. Really.” He touches Henri’s cheek. “Of course I do. C’mon, course I do, look at you. Pretty thing like you, why wouldn’t I want an eyeful of the rest of you?”

“I have them also.” Henri whispers to him, holds him a little more gently. “Is that it? That you think I will not want to see you? I do.”

“I mean it’s not… it’s not about do you want to now, when you haven’t.” He shrugs. It’s a little bit about will he still like him once he has. Okay, it’s entirely about that. “No one’s… No one’s touched me, since-- or looked at me. I mean… I’ve had the opportunity. But…”

“But it is difficult.” He nods. “The first time I was… injured, so badly, I kept my clothes on, after. During sex. It was easier, and we had to be quick, so he couldn’t complain. Even before then half the time we didn’t have the luxury to undress… But we are here, Adam. Alive, on the other side. And… not every part of me is so pretty. But I can trust you. You can trust me.”

“Yeah. Yeah, okay. So you like it with the lights on?”

“I prefer life with the lights on.” He shrugs. “I’ve had enough dark. Haven’t you?”

“Don’t think a room’d feel dark with you in it.” 

“Adam…” Henri kisses him again. “Tu me rends heureux”

“Heureux… don’t know that one.”

“ _Happy_ , Adam, you make me happy.”

“ _I_ do?”

“Yes.” He laughs. “That is the one word you don’t know?”

“No, there are _plenty_ of words I don’t know. Tu me rends heureux.”

“ _Tellement_ heureux.”

“ _Tu_.” He presses. And he knows his accent still manages to be horrendous, but Henri doesn’t point it out this time. “Tu me rends heureux, uh, aussi. You do.”

The smile that spreads across Henri’s face at that could light the whole block. 

Getting undressed is a little bit of a struggle, since he’s already on top of the man, and his leg is done cooperating with him for the night, but they manage okay-- they coordinate Adam bearing his weight on one arm at a time while Henri gets his vest and shirt pushed off, and then they get rolled onto their sides, Henri helping him to get settled as painlessly as possible before sitting up and stripping out of his jacket, his tie, while Adam gets his shirt unbuttoned. He sheds that as well, dropping down to lounge on one elbow, his other hand roaming over Adam’s chest.

There’s a scar just below the sleeve of his undershirt, Adam brushes his thumb over it. It’s not neat, exactly, but it’s not _through_ \-- a bullet must have grazed him pretty deep, but not bone deep. The angle… he was damn lucky. 

“See? Not so pretty.” Henri says, and Adam pulls him down into a kiss. 

“Pretty enough for me. Does it ever bother you?”

“Non. They pull sometimes, but this was not so bad. It’s old enough now.”

“Good.” He cranes himself a little to be able to press his lips to the same spot, only for Henri to twist around to catch him for another kiss. 

He peels his undershirt off next, and there’s the rest-- Adam can read the story in them-- the side and back of the shoulder is peppered with scar tissue, little spots here and there. He’d been by a wall, when the bullet grazed his arm, been sprayed with shrapnel or exploded bits of brick or stone. Or maybe a tree, splintering, or a door, something. Been just the right distance to take a little blowback from the impact, but the damage isn’t deep. For that, he can be glad, as he runs his fingertips over it all like he was reading braille. 

The really ugly one is a knife that cut across the right side of his abdomen, around about the bottom of the ribcage. A mostly clean slash that caught, went deep enough to hurt. 

“I had to say my appendix was removed. Though, the scar is too high for that. But as long as no one sees… it explained my convalescence, and if I was careful with that side, how I had to move while it healed. It was the worst one. My shoulder… sometimes in the summertime, I feel a little bit. Like pins and needles, or a little ache where the worst of it is. But, not bad. This one… it is healed now, but it took a long time.”

Adam touches him reverently. First, the scar, and then the muscle beneath soft skin, all the hidden strength-- not just from dancing, he knows now. But… from dancing, too. 

“I still think you’re pretty.” He says, running a teasingly light touch down towards Henri’s belly, fingertips just dipping beneath his waistband. Plenty of room to, and to push that waistband lower, since he’s shrugged his suspenders off. To tease, and to feel the way Henri responds, the little shiver, the muscles contracting at his too-gentle touch. “Pretty boy.”

“You think I am pretty?” He asks, and blushes up real cute. “I don’t know.”

“ _Pretty boy_.” Adam kisses him, the hinge of his jaw, his throat. “ _I_ know.”

“Oh… I think you are…”

“Yeah?”

“You have… beautiful hands. And you are… very handsome.”

Adam doesn’t know about ‘very’. He thinks he’s passably good-looking, but he wouldn’t say he stands out from the crowd. Still, it’s sure nice to hear Henri say it. 

Sure nice to hear Henri, the way he sighs for more when he’s kissed, the smallest sounds when Adam nibbles at his throat and suddenly there’s a hand wound firm in his hair to keep him there. He kisses his way lower, leaves a hickey down at the base of Henri’s throat. Easily hidden, but there’s a little satisfaction in it. The kind of thing he never got with a guy before. The kind of thing that wasn’t easy to hide when you showered with fifty guys, for one thing, so there was no leaving marks. 

Anyway, he likes marking _Henri_ up, not because he never got to do it before with someone else, but because he likes Henri being his. There are patches of skin pink from being roughed up by his stubble, which will fade quick enough, but he likes seeing it. He likes imagining all the rest of the places he could leave his mark on Henri, whose skin is so pale and so soft it’s just begging to be kissed and sucked and nibbled and rubbed at until he’s just covered in little signs of love.

“You’ve got me dizzy, you know that?” He asks, nipping at an earlobe. He’d call the noise Henri makes at that a squeal, though he thinks Henri would protest that it wasn’t. “You get my head all turned around, pretty boy. ‘Til I don’t know what’s what.”

“Et toi aussi.”

“Uh-huh. Just like that. You talk pretty… you walk pretty… I even bet your--”

“ _Adam_!” Henri gasps, squirming under another teasing touch, and Adam chuckles against his ear and kisses his way back towards his lips. 

“Something wrong, pretty boy?”

“Non. Do it again.”

He obliges gladly, runs his hands over Henri’s chest and down to his belly, grabs at his ass-- that gets a favorable reaction out of him as well, though this time it’s muffled by a kiss, a deep groan and the way his entire body rolls against Adam’s like he’s itching to be closer, closer still. 

They get rid of Henri’s pants next, leave him in his tented undershorts, before he’s easing Adam onto his back, kissing his way down slow and gentle… and there’s still some fear, some discomfort, in baring himself, even now, but he doesn’t let it take over when he’s so close to what they both want. He lets Henri undress him and fights back against the tightness in his chest.

Henri’s lips begin where one of the bullets entered, his fingertips trace over the surgical scars, all the work to fix shattered bone. He kisses the places where there used to be pins holding him together, his touch dances over scarring from a spray of shrapnel. He finds the place where one bullet left him-- a second had to be removed when they were piecing him together again. He leaves absolutely no doubt about how little Adam’s scars could put him off. 

“I am glad you are here.” He says. “And that we met. I am glad… I am glad I have you.”

“Yeah. Me, too.”

“It went through the bone, here… Here, it was stopped?”

“Lodged in there just above the knee.” Adam nods. “Right here, it gets tight-- like you were saying, when it’s hot. But my whole leg locks up when it’s cold. Pain goes clear up to the hip, even though I didn’t take a bullet there. Jarred it when I went down maybe. But it’s the stress.”

“Yes. Because of where it does not move how it used to. So it is tiring…” Henri kisses his knee, not the scar this time but the knee itself. “I can understand. You never get… the relief from it.”

“Ah, it’s not so bad. Really. And I always know when it’s gonna rain.”

“Do you? Mine don’t tell me that. Not deep enough, maybe. It is in the bones?”

“Yeah. Along here, down-- well, down a little ways.” He gestures along the side of his leg. “See down there where there’s a little scar? Down just past that. They had to screw me together like I was a woodworking project. But I’m still here.”

“You are magnificent.” Henri tells him, and he says it like he really means it.

“Yeah, well… there’s, uh, more of me.” He says, watches the way the smile curls at Henri’s lips, coy. 

“How much more of you is there?” He tugs at Adam’s boxers, just barely inching them down. Gazes up at him with a playful kind of heat and drops a kiss just below his navel. 

“Enough.”

He’s not hard-- he’d lost momentum, during the whole process of getting his pants off-- but he’s not all soft, either. Enough to make a good first impression, anyway. 

“ _Oh_.” Henri _looks_ at him, glances up and then gives it another long look, before sliding a hand under to lift him up. 

“Is that a good ‘oh’? I mean, you _knew_ I was--”

“I know.” He laughs, leaves another kiss to the top of Adam’s thigh, and one to his hip, before he slides up the bed and out of his own shorts. “And I am… well, as you see.”

“Very European.” Adam jokes, getting a hand around him. 

“Oh, this is the style in America?”

“Well, I run a little large, but the cut’s pretty popular.”

Henri laughs again and shakes his head, and surges forward to kiss Adam again. And like that, it’s _easy_. 

They don’t try anything new or ambitious-- they stroke each other off, which is familiar enough to Adam, except he’s never fooled around with a guy who wasn’t circumcised before. He’s a little unsure at first, but it opens up some interesting avenues, and Henri’s sensitive all over in general, but he’s _very_ sensitive there. 

And they kiss, they never stop kissing. 

Adam could never bring himself to ask for it, fooling around with guys in the army and everyone pretending it was just a thing that happened when no one had any better options, pretending there weren’t guys who _craved_ it with every fiber of their being, to be close to another man, how men feel and how they smell and what it is to have another man’s hands touch you anywhere. He pretended he didn’t care about kissing. He got kissed sometimes, but not often. Most of the time it was just someone else’s hand in the dark. Not because he didn’t mean anything, hell, but they all meant everything to each other in ways that weren’t about sex or romance. Just that kissing wasn’t much a part of it. There was easy affection, of the kinds that pass between friends who sometimes quietly jerk each other off in a dark corner or under a blanket. Friends who sometimes hold hands when the whole damn world’s falling apart, or rest a sleepless night in each other’s arms trying to keep the terrors at bay. And friends who sometimes kiss, but not so often. Not like lovers, when they did kiss, not really. It was all fine for what it was, but it’s so different with Henri, who kisses him like he can’t breathe without him. Who kisses him hot and heavy and fast, who kisses him slow and sweet and gentle, who kisses him with teeth and who kisses him so soft and light it’s like waking from a dream still thinking maybe you feel something. 

This is what Henri dreams about-- the moment he thinks about dreaming it hits him. He’d known Henri had dreamed about him before, because they’d been a little past tipsy once and Henri had said ‘I dream about you sometimes’, only he’d clammed up, fobbed him off with something about Radio City and the glorious future of their artistic partnership, but he’d been so red in the face and so flustered. Adam hadn’t considered that it could be _this_ , though it had occurred to him it might have been a dream where they kissed and that idea had pleased him more than he was ready to think about. But he thinks maybe the dreams are more like this, with the two of them straining to be closer, with their hands on each other, with Henri moaning and trembling and…

It’s just good, it’s just right, being with Henri and touching him, kissing him, adoring him. Good, coming down after to look into Henri’s eyes, how they sparkle, how warm and soft and hazy the look of love is on him. How he smiles, and tries to hide a little laugh as he looks for a place to wipe his hand and finally fishes his handkerchief from the pocket of his discarded pants. 

He cleans them both up, and folds the handkerchief into a careful neat bundle before hiding it back in his pocket. And then he flops back down in Adam’s bed, pushes him down so that he can lay against his chest, curled against him, his weight against Adam’s good side. 

“Je t’aime bien.” He whispers, and Adam curls a hand around his shoulder and holds him closer.

“Love you.” He swallows. 

“All of you.” Henri’s hand slips down, to the uppermost spread of the scarring along Adam’s leg, down to wrap around his knee and the worst of it. “I love all of you well.”

“All of you.” Adam echoes, pressing a kiss into Henri’s hair. “I love all of you.”


End file.
